Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 293 posts

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#101

Post by ajross »

rayiner wrote: post #89
ajross wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in the same sense that's happening here, though. I assume you're talking about takes like "Why don't working class white voters vote for democrats?", which isn't fundamentally any different as I see it. It's a legitimate question, and the answers (in both cases) tell us things about how politics work in a way that simple analysis doesn't. And FWIW: as far as tone, this one seems more "accusatory" to me. There's…

The tone is accusatory because usually there is a classist dimension to the question. Why does a high income tech worker vote Democrat when that would cause her own taxes to go up? The question implies noble intent on the part of the tech worked: because it’s better for society as a whole. We don’t extend that charitable interpretation to the blue collar worker in Iowa. Why do they vote Republican even though Democra…

OK, agreed, both sides have ample ability to manufacture outrage (I mean, come on: no one serious actually expresses the outrageous contempt you're imagining, that's 100% interpretation) over takes like this. I just don't see why it's remotely as asymmetric as you think it is. You don't think lefty folks get offended too?

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#102

Post by esotericn »

xen2xen1 wrote: post #79
esotericn wrote: post #31

This is only surprising if you subscribe strictly to Sinclair's quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." In reality, many many people work at jobs that they don't believe in. I personally haven't been able to hack it - I'm too stubborn to keep my mouth shut at appropriate times. But ultimately, people can and will vote against "their own self…

The quote is highly contingent on one thing, that a man's salary is hard to replace. For most of humanity, it is. I'd wager if you work at a FANNG company you don't view it that way. Hard to get quite as much, maybe, but getting some making $250k to move to $200k a year is much, much different than someone moving from $45 a year to $30k a year, or $25k a year.

I don't think you can generalize that much.

Personally none of that stuff mattered once I earned more than like, twice minimum wage. Nowhere near $200K.

Maybe that's a US thing, since you guys have so much tied up in work (health insurance etc).

I just think about having enough money to get by and help people around me, employment fits around that, not the other way around.

Sure, people who are actually earning biscuits as a wage are basically slaves. So it goes.

FWIW I don't work in adtech, I think it's bollocks and that everyone doing it should stop.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#103

Post by oceanghost »

sedeki wrote: post #2

Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.

Hi, I'm likely the only person here who has read the 1200 page book "Human Action" by Ludwig Von Mises on which libertarianism is based.

The book was published in 1949, and the premise which is exhaustively laid out is, if you CAN work, you should, and the government should interfere with its citizens the least amount possible.

These are reasonable principles, but two things happened.

One, the Republicans captured the Ron Paul/Tea Pary (Libertarian) movement of the early 2000s and tried to fold it into their party. Many of us left (including me), but it effectively dismantled the movement.

Second, it was less evident in the early 2000s, but, the premise of libertarianism becomes less and less valid every day. When Human Action was written, the need for physical labor was high, it was probably true that anyone who was able to work, could have found some job doing physical labor or menial jobs.

That's simply not true anymore. Physical labor is largely done by machines and SV is actively eating low skill jobs, such that the invariant of libertarinism--that there is always work-- is broken.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#104

Post by rayiner »

maxerickson wrote: post #100
rayiner wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone is accusatory because usually there is a classist dimension to the question. Why does a high income tech worker vote Democrat when that would cause her own taxes to go up? The question implies noble intent on the part of the tech worked: because it’s better for society as a whole. We don’t extend that charitable interpretation to the blue collar worker in Iowa. Why do they vote Republican even though Democra…

I mean, I've heard blue collar workers ranting about how they finally got someone like Trump in to clean up Washington and now that "bitch Nancy Pelosi" is all over him. That's not a nuanced "better for the country" discussion. It was a real discussion, in a real factory, not a fake discussion in a fake coffee shop.

“Better for the country” doesn’t have to be “nuanced.” “The best thing for America is god, guns, and capitalism” is not nuanced. It is, ultimately, an expression of values based on a belief about what will enhance national prosperity.

(I could recount “real discussions” with folks in northern Virginia growing up, where they express sneering contempt for the folks in the “rest of Virginia.” I don’t think that’s relevant. Obviously race and class play a role in political disputes in the US. That doesn’t excuse making assumptions about why entire groups of people vote the way they do.)

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#105

Post by robomartin »

The only reason anyone in the US supports these people is because they have never lived in the socialist big government utopia these politicians champion. In fact, not even the politicians themselves have lived in the society they propose! How is that for a brilliant starting point.

Ask anyone who has experienced these ideas in the flesh and you’ll find someone absolutely perplexed that US voters don’t laugh these people out of office.

As the saying goes: In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

All US voters really know about these ideas are the promises and a distorted theory and history that conveniently leaves out the horror, the reality, of these ideas. They have been implemented time and time again in various forms across continents and time. And they have laid to waste everything they touch.

You’d think people would have learned better by now. Sadly, that required an educational system rooted in fair historical exposure rather than one that pushes a single ideology at every level. This ignorance of history leads to repeating mistakes.

Here is the other fact that absolutely floors me: Nobody can name a single nation —not one— which, after adopting these policies, has elevated itself to a level even remotely resembling the success and accomplishments that can be attributed to free market capitalism.

Sure, capitalism isn’t perfect, nothing ever will be, yet it has elevated more people out of poverty, cured more disease and improved the lives of more people than anything else in recorded history.

The allure of these twisted ideas comes at the intersection of a badly educated public and the promise of solving all problems by taking from those who have more. Easy proposition.

Reality is that it never solves anything and often creates more problems. The $15/hr minimum wage “solution” is one of the best modern examples of this effects.

The other element naive supporters miss is that the politicians proposing these ideas never live the reality they want you to live. They never live it before or after they are elected. See if you can name even a single politician who has, anywhere in the world and across modern history. That should tell you something.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#106

Post by maxerickson »

zozbot234 wrote: post #76
epistasis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A wealth tax is a tax on capital, period - and making capital more expensive hurts everyone, but it hugely hurts those who need capital the most. This doesn't really follow at all, and is directly in contradiction with your desire to get rid of Prop 13. Property taxes are the most common wealth tax!

Wrong. Property taxes mostly bear on land, not capital. Especially in heavily urbanized areas with lots of land value, as we see in CA. Landed property is not "wealth", it's just undue appropriation of something that is created by the community. Land taxes reverse this undue appropriation and let the community that actually created that wealth benefit from it, as it should. It's like the opposite of a wealth tax!

I mean, lots of billionaires also essentially got lucky.

DOS and Windows weren't the most glorious software to ever stalk the Earth, they were the operating systems that happened to get popular on cheap hardware. Arguing that Bill Gates created all that wealth that comes with the network effect inherent in software and a homeowner is unduly appropriating community value is really something or other.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#107

Post by rehasu »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #54

What a surprise. I'd love to be a billionaire, but I like Sanders opinions about whether they should exist. I'd love to be worth enough for it to hurt me, but I like Warren's wealth tax idea. I'd love to pay lower taxes, or less progressive taxes, but I'm happy to support those less fortunate. As a matter of fact, I'm not even a single-issue voter! Perhaps most controversially, I think altruism is good for society. S…

It is not voting against your own interest if your interest is a fair world and not highest amount of private money.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#109

Post by tfehring »

zozbot234 wrote: post #66
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #54

What a surprise. I'd love to be a billionaire, but I like Sanders opinions about whether they should exist. I'd love to be worth enough for it to hurt me, but I like Warren's wealth tax idea. I'd love to pay lower taxes, or less progressive taxes, but I'm happy to support those less fortunate. As a matter of fact, I'm not even a single-issue voter! Perhaps most controversially, I think altruism is good for society. S…

Wealth taxes are actually bad for society, and especially bad for altruistic people who care about the less fortunate. A wealth tax is a tax on capital, period - and making capital more expensive hurts everyone, but it hugely hurts those who need capital the most. If you care about lowering inequality without hurting folks more than you have to, what you want is a mildly-progressive consumption tax. (I.e. an income t…

Government spending in capitalist countries creates returns to capital. Financing that spending almost entirely through taxes on labor, as the US does today, means that government spending is (in part) a direct transfer from labor to capital.

Also, capital is not a scarce resource in the US today. For firms that would be worth investing in but don't have access to capital on reasonable terms, the reason for their lack of access is a combination of incentive problems and inefficiency on the part of e.g. VC firms, not because the capital isn't out there. It's true that a wealth tax would increase the cost of equity, but the Finance 101 strategy of "only initiate a project if the IRR of the expected cashflows is greater than the cost of equity" isn't really meaningful for startups since the future cashflows are so uncertain.

If by "those who need capital the most" you mean charities and not startups, a wealth tax would just incentivize giving more to charities and doing it sooner.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#110

Post by jki275 »

ajross wrote: post #101
rayiner wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone is accusatory because usually there is a classist dimension to the question. Why does a high income tech worker vote Democrat when that would cause her own taxes to go up? The question implies noble intent on the part of the tech worked: because it’s better for society as a whole. We don’t extend that charitable interpretation to the blue collar worker in Iowa. Why do they vote Republican even though Democra…

OK, agreed, both sides have ample ability to manufacture outrage (I mean, come on: no one serious actually expresses the outrageous contempt you're imagining, that's 100% interpretation) over takes like this. I just don't see why it's remotely as asymmetric as you think it is. You don't think lefty folks get offended too?

The post you're replying to is presumably a high income left-leaning voter from the way they phrased the comment. They're literally expressing what you say doesn't exist quite clearly.

And anyway your own candidate in 2016 famously called everyone that didn't agree with her "deplorable", and it's a common theme throughout left-leaning high income coastal communities to look down on those hicks in flyover country who are too dumb to vote democrat -- you realize the right didn't dream those up, right?

Post reply on HN